Life
The pound sterling doesn’t buy happiness
My second favourite religious joke is an old Jewish joke (which I read in the Harvard Review, so I assume…
Come back Aristotle Onassis – all is forgiven
Back in the very early Sixties there was an uninhabited islet off the west coast of Greece by the name…
An undergraduate anorak at 32
When I was 32, tired at last, for the moment anyway, of seizing the day, I stopped drinking and gave…
These days, when men wolf-whistle at me, I thank them
Incredible as it seems to me now, there was a time when a wolf whistle was annoying. A man would…
The war on e-cigarettes is enough to make me give up giving up
I have been, on and off, a lifelong smoker; but I gave up in January 2009 on the day of…
The making of a racing realist
One of the greatest parliamentary sketch-writers of all time, Norman Shrapnel, made a point of never socialising with the politicians…
Bridge
One person who lets out a whoop of delight when I am on holiday is my saintly partner, Artur Malinowski.…
Gifted and talented
Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, I have persisted in the belief that the ability to play chess well indicates…
No. 330
White to play. This position is from Polgar-Bareev, Moscow 1996. Neither king is entirely happy and in such situations having…
Rhyme time
In Competition No. 2863 you were invited to recast a well-known nursery rhyme in the style of a well-known author.…
2178: Saint and playwright
The unclued lights are connected by 33/23. One pair of unclued lights gives one context, in which two further pairs…
to 2175: Elated grunt
The four works were Waverley (anagram of 12/21), Kenilworth (15/8), The Talisman (29/2) and Ivanhoe (38/37) by SIR WALTER SCOTT (diagonally…
The lesson of the young men fighting for Isis: evil is in all of us
I had an interesting discussion with my friend Aidan Hartley earlier this week about whether the young men fighting for…
Battle for Britain
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Just what Diego Costa needed: a guide to the traditions of the Premier League
That excitable but likeable hombre, Everton manager Roberto Martinez, took it upon himself to give a stern lecture to the…
Dear Mary: How would you answer Radek Sikorski’s goose-stepping question?
Q. In his Spectator notebook of 30 August, describing a recent gaudy at the Oxford college he attended in the…
Fischer’s is like visiting Vienna without having to go to Austria (thank God)
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
‘Escalate’: an exciting new way to say ‘pass the buck’
Shaun Wright, the police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, spoke to Sky television last week about how little he…
Vienna without the Austrians
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
Those ‘traditions of English football’ in full
That excitable but likeable hombre, Everton manager Roberto Martinez, took it upon himself to give a stern lecture to the…
Wonder Wall
One of the greatest parliamentary sketch-writers of all time, Norman Shrapnel, made a point of never socialising with the politicians…
You can't make friends with Uncle Sam and survive for long
Can somebody tell me when America last got it right? Uncle Sam’s track record in selecting leaders in faraway places…
Glazed tiles, a barred window: it must be another morning in a police cell
In my late twenties, it was not unusual for me to wake up in a police cell wearing a paper…
Why won't my cleaner leave me the Watchtower?
‘Hi I did Put it on It needed more’ is the pleasingly obscure haiku I find on my kitchen table.…
Wedding receptions make me wonder about the point of marriage
Back from holiday in Italy, I look out of my kitchen window in Northamptonshire to find the country view blocked…
